“A puritan traveler with a dark past and a bad attitude, he always used to stumble across pirates, demons, vampires, werewolves, sorcerers and witches in his road for personal salvation.”

In what way was Kane’s past “dark”? The only references – and the same ones Bassett used to justify his origin story – were one line in “Blades of the Brotherhood” where he “lead a rout of ungodly men,” and at the end where he suggests “his soul’s salvation” as a *possible* reason for his wanderlust.

As for “bad attitude”, I can’t imagine where that came from. He comes across as an amazingly decent soul, whose only “bad attitude” is when he gets all pious and holier-than-thou against his foes – and when his foes are pirates, rapists, scoundrels and sorcerers, he’s no worse than Batman is.

“Basically, Solomon Kane was an unlikable fundamentalist bastard”

I really don’t see it. Kane is the sort of guy who fights genuine evil – demons, devils, murderers, rapists, slavers – and doesn’t go after the horrors. Whenever he meets a young man, he’s harsh, but he’s also empathetic: when he meets young women, he’s kind and gentle. Not much of a bastard there. Indeed, out of all Howard’s protagonists, he’s probably the most traditionally “heroic” out of all of them – definitely more than Conan.

“and his human enemies often happened to be savages from darkest Africa, devious Arab or Jewish necromancers and other charming stereotypes.”

This isn’t borne out by the stories at all. Just going by the completed tales, the most common ethnicity Kane faces as a foe – not counting supernatural threats – are white Europeans.

“Red Shadows” – A white Frenchman, with a secondary black villain (and a secondary protagonist who is black)
“Skulls in the Stars” – A white Englishman
“Rattle of Bones” – A different white Frenchman
“The Moon of Skulls” – a black sorceress-queen
“The Hills of the Dead” – vampires (in addition to N’Longa, there is a sympathetic black couple who serve as supporting roles)
“The Footfalls Within” – Arab slavers (Kane actively aids black slaves in gaining their freedom from the Arabs)
“Wings in the Night” Winged monsters (again, Kane is working to help a black village from the supernatural threat)
“The Blue Flame of Vengeance” – a white Nederlander
“The Right Hand of Doom” – a jewish necromancer

While a sizeable minority of the villains are black (and being set in Africa how could it be otherwise?) the majority of foes Kane faces are, in fact, white. Three of the four incomplete Kane stories feature white villains. This criticism of Howard writing his heroes as facing mostly ethnic minorities has also been levelled at his Conan stories, and is just as untrue.

That Howard was a man of his times is obvious: there is a lot of stuff that, to modern eyes, would be considered insensitive and even offensive. That’s history. People thought differently then: it doesn’t make racism or stereotypes any less hurtful or wrong, but there comes a point where it’s just to be expected. What’s more worthy of note, to me, is that a 1930s white Texan still created a multitude of sympathetic black characters despite his environment: the wise, intelligent N’Longa, the sensitive, kindly Ace Jessel, the sympathetic couple from “Hills of the Dead.” Yes, Howard used stereotypes, but occasionally he rose above them.

“Crucially, Bassett is a true Howard fan and remembers what John Milius with his crappy Schwarzenegger Conan movie ignored completely: That those stories had more in common with Lovecraft and horror fiction than with any “heroic” fantasy.”

Bassett may profess to be a true Howard fan, but then, Milius said so too. I think Bassett made as many divergences from the source material as Milius did: for much of the film, Purefoy’s Kane is virtually unrecognizable, with only a few sparks of the character’s original fire showing through (though I agree that his performance was outstanding nonetheless.)

I’d be happy to see Purefoy return should a sequel be forthcoming, but Bassett would have a lot of making up to do.